Dads of Tinder
⤏ REFLECTIONS ON SEXTING BOOMERS
⤏ BY ERIKA GAJDA
⤏ PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2020
Throughout the last five years, I’ve messaged men on Tinder over age 45 — “What do you do? Do you have kids?” — then documented the resulting conversations. What started out as a silly idea ended up being a huge part of my life as an amalgamation of pseudo-anthropological research, jokes, and a lesson on what not to do to woo a 27-year-old in online dating.
Back in 2013, Tinder was still new and alien. Amongst us millennials, it was regarded as a hook-up app, so when I downloaded it, it was more out of sheer curiosity than to find love. At the time, I was a student at a massive public university who had a crush on every other guy on campus. I didn’t exactly need an app to get with someone, but I wanted to be part of the zeitgeist.
To spice my conversations up, I decided to check out the older gentlemen of Tinder; the joke in my friend group being that I’ve always been exceptionally good at chatting up their dads. I figured I’d try it virtually. At this time, you couldn’t set a more specific age past 45, which I took as a sign that Tinder was designated for millennial users. Who exactly were the middle-aged folks that knew about Tinder? And what did they expect to find there? This wasn’t exactly eHarmony — there was no personality test or compatibility rating. We were just swiping on faces alone. Older men couldn’t possibly be as shallow as me, a college student with a septum piercing and low standards. Could divorced 50-year-olds really be that simple? Wouldn’t they want something meaningful?
So, I set my age preferences to the max and swiped right. On all of them.
When I first started swiping on the dads, I was excited to have a platform where I could talk to middle-aged men without the filter of societal expectations. As a 20-year old student living in Seattle, most white middle-aged men in my day-to-day life were my professors. I considered them respectfully, because that’s how I was taught to treat my elders. But here on Tinder, these men just appeared to be... men. They stopped being dentists, or pilots, or electricians. They just became guys looking to have sex with me — a biology major living in a rented basement with five other students.
With this new reality of older men as my equals, I asked them the questions I genuinely wanted answers to — “Why are you on Tinder? What do you do for work? Do you have kids? Are they my age?” Usually, the conversations unravelled on their own, as my questioning made it difficult to fetishize my youth. But some would get turned on from me asking those questions alone.
“Could divorced 50-year-olds really be that simple? Wouldn’t they want something meaningful?”
A crumb of elevated interest would result in a lengthy description of a fantasy that was likely inspired by a porn VHS they watched in the 90s. Everything about the language they’d use, to the pet names they’d call me, were antiquated. Red G-string, stilettos, tight skin, “face à la Jennifer Aniston” — their projection of what they wanted me to be was practically Playboy in its peak years.
One dad in particular, featured below, inspired me to eventually post the screenshots anonymously.
As his impromptu sexting trickled in, I couldn’t take my eyes off of his profile photo — one with his young son seated on his lap. The juxtaposition between his wholesome family photo and his mini erotic novel shook me to my core, and brought me to Instagram as @swipes4daddy.
Over time, it dawned on me that these men were tapping into their pre-marriage years with the zeal of a cryogenically frozen Austin Powers, reawaken in 2020 with an iPhone and unlimited horniness. Rather than catching up on current affairs and adapting to the modern social climate, their approach to the world never shirks their signature Reagan-era optimism. Now, *not all dads* fall into this category. There are certainly some who are aware of the sheer shit state of reality. They either have a caveat in their profile suggesting, “Trump supporters swipe left” or here in the UK, “No Tories.” Some might speak about the political climate or remark on how women should have the right to make choices about their own bodies. I found these kinds of statements rather comforting after swiping right on so many balding, yet demanding men. But these dads — with their veneer of liberal wokeness — perhaps worried me more. I had hoped that men with more progressive values would better understand the unequal power dynamic between a boomer and a 27-year-old freelancer who reuses Ziploc bags to save money. But what I learned instead, is that these men don’t give much thought to the implications of their swiping, if any thought at all.
“These men were tapping into their pre-marriage years with the zeal of a cryogenically frozen Austin Powers, reawaken in 2020 with an iPhone and unlimited horniness.”
Let’s take the above example. Here we have A Real Gentleman™. He’s willing and eager to go down on a lady, maybe even without expecting reciprocation. He wants to take your breath away, but not his wife’s. He can grasp the idea that women can experience pleasure, so the consequences of his infidelity must just be a pain he chooses to ignore.
These emotionally-stunted dads make the conscious decision to disregard their histories to instead find a quick fix — having sex (or trying to have sex) with someone half their age. Their strategy of emotional indifference is what allows these men to make wildly incongruous statements.
I doubt, after twenty years of marriage, that anyone has ‘zero emotional baggage.’ I don’t think these men lack the resources for dealing with divorce — I think they actively choose to dismiss healthy coping mechanisms. This transparent ‘fuck boy,’ behavior shows a desire to move on without actually confronting any major life changes.
These dads view younger women through rose-tinted glasses — someone submissive, innocent, perfect. The illusion is so real that many forget they are fathers to girls exactly the same age.
I don’t have a degree in psychology, so all of my research is completely anecdotal. With that being said, many of these men do not have custody of their children or “The kids are on their own.” It became clear to me that older generations of men have had a historically less active role in raising their children. Their fatherly obligations feel forced, or — even worse — transactional. When I ask, “Do you have kids,” they’ll assure me that they only have them “Every other weekend,” “Once a month,” or or my personal favorite:
The deadbeat dad is nothing new. And older, more traditional generations were certainly less active in caretaker roles. As a by-product, they missed out on a significant part of parenting that would enable them to see similarities between their own kids and their kids’ peers. Instead, there’s their daughter and then there’s their daughter’s friend they’d like to fondle. These dads try to rationalize their swiping on millennials by saying “I don’t look my age!” “I’m young at heart!” “‘Women my age are jaded!”
But that’s the beauty of dads on Tinder, they have an uncanny ability to rationalize just about anything. They are masters at making shit up to support their narrative. They want to date someone young because they’re “young at heart,” but they matched me because I look like I have “an old soul.” Well that’s a twist. Am I now his mom? Whoever this full-time landlord from Trenton, New Jersey is, one thing is certain — he will say just about anything to get his way. It’s the superpower of middle-aged white men. They make up qualifications and get things they don’t deserve — whether it’s a job, a title, or a girlfriend.
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⤏ ERIKA GAJDA (SHE/HER) IS A POLISH-AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY RESEARCHER AND DAD WHISPERER CURRENTLY BASED IN LONDON. SHE SPENDS MOST OF HER FREE TIME SHOPPING FOR CLASSIC ROCK AND DISCO RECORDS, FACETIMING HER PARENTS' SIX CATS, AND READING WIKIPEDIA PAGES ABOUT AUTHORITARIANS. IN HER FORMER LIFE, SHE WORKED IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY LABS STUDYING INSECTS. ERIKA THRIVES UNDER A MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE AND DREAMS OF OWNING A BERRY FARM.